We happened to be sharing a table with Star Tribune critic Chris Riemenshneider over the weekend—although we prefer to stay incognito, the better to avoid a punch on the nose for previous infractions and faux pas. Where were we? In the choked air of the Fine Line Music Cafe, after receiving a pair of press tickets for the sold-out show. (God Almighty, please pass that smoking bill. We have smoke-induced glaucoma, and the entire office needs an abatement team after wearing that shirt in doors.) So here is the justification for receiving those freebies: A review of the reviewers.
We recieved our tickets at about the same time that we read Mr. Dylan Hicks’ review of the band, which is the Kings of Leon, a Tennessee quartet whom we happen to like quite a lot. We like Dylan, too—so much so that we still fondly remember things he wrote for us and we are pleased with his recent elevation as an editor—but we rigorously disagree with his crabby prejudice against this band.
We won’t go into a lot of the details, because there aren’t many things that are as boring as rock critics arguing about bands. But we did want to hold these fellows feet to the fire just a little bit.
Dylan, we have to say, kind of stepped in it with last week’s issue of his weekly newspaper. Not only did he trot out that hoary old complaint about this town basically being too white. (It is. This is not news anymore. Besides, the Current plays all kinds of music by black artists—just not a lot of gangsta rap. And they’re not all dead, either! Well, you’ll be able to read all about it this week, no doubt, in the newspaper’s letters from readers.) It’s OK that he failed to see the point of the Kings of Leon (which is their twisted sense of humor and their Dixie-Redneck-in-King-Arthur’s-Court shtick), and it’s even OK that he committed the worst critical sin that can be committed (not at least inferring what the critic DOES care about, which is the only way to innoculate a mean review, with some human sympathy). As it is, a reader might think the critic doesn’t want to admit what it is, precisely, that’s bugging him. You don’t want to give readers a reason to say, “He’s just jealous.” (Overheard from a nearby table.) That’s a bad sign.
Dylan based his critique mostly on the lyrical content of the band’s music, and the quality of the singer’s voice. It is dangerous business relying on even the most audible, legible musicians from their own published lyrics sheets when it is the basis for your critique. But to translate an intentional southern mush-mouth like Caleb Followill is a special risk indeed. The more obvious thing to do is to describe the sound and the overall mood, rather than what the singer is actually saying. But this is a much more difficult job.
You can have the words right and get the critique wrong. Where Dylan hears an angry, cynical, morally bankrupt band, we hear a mirthful, funny, clever, pop-savvy band. (You could make a case that it’s a put-on, without that being necessarily a bad thing—why do you think they call it “show-business”?)
No one likes to be misunderstood, especially when the misunderstanding gets printed one hundred thousand times. Perhaps this is why the Kings back-identified one song in the following way: “That last song was called ‘Dylan Hicks Can Suck My Cock.’” This, by the way, was an unfortunate, juvenile violation of the longstanding rock ‘n’ roll rule never to let anyone know you read your own criticism. But it got a big laugh, and probably made Dylan feel good too.
As for our man from the Star Tribune, we noticed that he tea-totalled during the show, and we find this admirable and slightly depressing, as he scribbled in one of those little reporters’ notebooks that fit into a spacious back pocket. We have no doubt that his views of the show will be considerably more sober than our own, and that’s as it should be. However, through an unfortunate phrasing, he implied that the Kings played material mostly from their first album, whereas we know that the Kings left out only one song from their entire, uh, oeuvre—the beautiful but difficult “Day Old Blues.”
Chris also managed to asperse the band by noting that they have received mixed reviews in other cities during this tour. But we’re not interested in other critics in other cities, and we don’t feel like the band should apologize for playing a tight show here. We know critics rely on other critics, but we wish they wouldn’t admit it. The fact that the Kings have been touring relentlessly since their first record—and that they recently had to forego a tour in Japan due to a bad case of CRSS guitar-elbow—and that they have been selected to warm up U2 on the monstrous Vertigo tour—all these facts kinda mitigate against this idea that the band can’t play live. Now as to the implication that they are taking illicit suppositories, as Reimenschneider seems to say, we can neither confirm nor deny that.
Hey, this is fun—reviewing the reviewers. We really ought to get out more.
